student's respect

7/30/2019 Student's respect

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Op-Ed: Teachers Arent

Widgets That Can Just BeReplacedA national teaching fellow shares why respect,competitive salaries, and professional developmentare a must for American teachers.

ByGreg Mullenholz, April 25, 2013

May 7 marks the annual celebration of National Teacher Appreciation Day

in the United States. Approximately 3.5 million teachers will be applauded

by their communities for the hard work they do and the sacrifices they

make each and every day. Staff lounges will be stocked with sweets, treats,

and lunch goods. Tokens will be shared, cards written, and banners hung.

Teachers will be thanked for the countless hours they labor in classrooms,

planning, grading, and doing whatever it takes to make sure that each and

every one of their students has what they need in order to succeed.

Sadly, we teachers face seemingly insurmountable odds in helping our

students succeed, and much of the struggle does not come from outside

influences; it comes from the system that teachers operate within.

If May 7 marks the sixth time you will have celebrated Teacher

Appreciation Day, then youve fared better than 50 percent of the teachers

who started the same year you did. More than likely, the job you were
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trained for is not the one you entered. And most likely of all, you havent

received the type of meaningful, targeted professional development that

you know you need in order to grow and succeed as a professional.

May 7, today, and every day, teachers should be celebrated, not for what

they do, but for the challenges they face on a daily basis.

To help change this, 5,700 teachers from across the country have raised

their voices to demand better of the teaching profession. The U.S.

Department of Education recently released the framework A Blueprint for

RESPECT: Recognizing Educational Success, Professional Excellence,and Collaborative Teaching meant to address the challenges the teaching

profession faces.

To create the framework, these thousands of teachers pulled together their

collective recommendations on how to transform the profession while

elevating it to the level of respect usually reserved for law, medicine, and

many other occupation.

RESPECT delivers seven actionable and critical components that, while

impressive and exciting in isolation, have to exist together. They are

interdependent and are not in any ranked order.

Seven Critical Components of the RESPECT Framework

1. A Culture of Shared Responsibility and Leadership2. Top Talent, Prepared for Success3. Continuous Growth and Professional Development4. Effective Teachers and Principals5. A Professional Career Continuum With Competitive Compensation
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6. Conditions for Successful Teaching and Learning7. Engaged Communities.

RESPECT details how teachers want a culture of shared responsibility and

leadership. Rather than being seen as replaceable widgets, teachers

themselves recognize the impact they can make when treated as trusted

professionals. Teachers want the best for their students and should be

allowed to make decisions they see as being in the interest of students.

As the gatekeepers of our profession, the Department of Education's

framework also calls for a higher set of standards for teacher preparation. It

demands that those who enter teaching have met a higher bar for entry.

Once these talented professionals are granted entry into the profession,

there must be more of a focus on continuous growth and professional

development driven by meaningful and fair evaluation systems that

accurately reflect our performance in the classroom.

Our job is to nurture student growth, and the way we are evaluated should

focus on this. Professional development should be a derivation of the

information gained from these evaluations in an effort to help us grow and

thereby help our students achieve.

Teachers should know how they are doing and be able to take decisive

actions in order to improve their performance. If evaluation systems are

well-designed and well-implemented, then effectiveness will begin to

emerge.

Study after study shows that the teacher is the single-most important

school-based factor in the achievement of students. If they are effective,


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and if they are led by an effective principal, then student growth will

increase at an incredible rate.

Some teachers, including those who are part of the 50 percent who leave intheir first five years, enter teaching hoping to make a living wage.

Unfortunately, the pay scales and steps that currently dictate our salaries

dont factor in the performance of a teacher. Imagine if the same were true

in other professions.

Some teachers want to stay in the classroom for their entire career. Some

want to take on leadership roles within their school or district while stillteaching. And, some want to take on instructional coaching roles where

they can scale their impact. This is why RESPECT calls for the creation of

career ladders with competitive compensation for educators.

Communities should embrace their schools and demand that they be high-

performing and stocked with effective educators.

And yes, while much of the work to complete the transformation seems

focused on the professional teachers, an even greater part of the work has

to do with the cultures where they work and the communities that surround

schools.

Dysfunctional school and district cultures do not attract effective educators

and they certainly do not incentivize them to hang around. Communitiesshould embrace their schools and demand that they be high-performing

and stocked with effective educators. Teachers want communities to be

involved in their schools.


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So, as National Teacher Appreciation Day approaches, rather than

cookies, donuts, cards, or balloons, we as an American public could show

our appreciation for the millions in our country who teach by asking the

simple questions: Why is RESPECT not the reality? And, what can policy

makers, voters, business leaders, teachers, principals, superintendents,

and others do to make this a reality?

Teachers developed this, teachers want this, and teachers know this is the

way to transform the profession.

Transforming Teaching and Leading

Recognizing Educational Success, Professional Excellence,

and Collaborative Teaching (RESPECT)

An Educator-led Movement

RESPECT represents a movement within the education profession to elevate and

transform teaching and leading so that all of our students are prepared to meet the

demands of the 21st century. As the demands of our world continue to expand, our

students need educators who are well prepared, compensated, and treated as

professionals.

A New Vision for Teaching and Leading

Resources

Teaching Matters Newsletter

Teacher Talk on Homeroom Blog

Get Involved and Access Resources

Teaching Ambassador Fellows

Contact Us
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Classroom Resources

After two years of discussion with teachers, school leaders, and other stakeholders, the

President has unveiled a Blueprint for RESPECT [PDF,4.5MB|ePub,1.2MB]. Read the

President's plan to assist educators in their work to transform their profession.

Seven Crit ical Compon ents

1. A Culture of Shared Responsibility and LeadershipIn a transformed profession, educators take collective ownership for student learning;

structures of shared decision-making and open-door practice provide educators with the

collaborative autonomy to do what is best for each student; and the profession takes upon

itself the responsibility for ensuring that high standards of practice are met. In this

professional culture, teachers and principals together make the primary decisions about

educator selection, assignment, evaluation, dismissal, and career advancementwith

student learning at the center of all such decisions.

2. Top Talent, Prepared for SuccessStudents with effective teachers perform at higher levels; students

have higher graduation rates, higher college-going rates, higher levelsof civic participation, and higher lifetime earnings. Thus, attracting a

high-performing and diverse pool of talented individuals to become

teachers and principals is a critical priority whether these are new

graduates or career switchers, and whether they enter the profession

through traditional or alternative pathways. We must support the

programs that prepare highly effective educators and offer high-quality

and substantive curricula and clinical preparation experiences. We

should expand the most successful programs, help other programs

improve, and close down the lowest-performing programs if they fail to

improve after receiving support. Preparation should include significant

clinical opportunities that involve highly effective teachers or principals

to oversee, mentor, and evaluate aspiring educators (preferably in the

school environments in which the candidates will ultimately work).

Further, aspiring educators must meet a high bar for entering the
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profession, demonstrating strong knowledge in the content they teach;

have mastered a repertoire of instructional strategies and know when

to use each appropriately; have the dispositions and aptitudes to work

effectively with students and with colleagues; and be learners

themselves who know how to plan purposefully, analyze studentlearning outcomes, reflect on their own practice, and adjust as

needed.

3. Continuous Growth and Professional DevelopmentEffective teachers and principals are career-long learners. Effective

schools and districts are learning communities where teachers and

principals individually and collaboratively continuously reflect on andimprove practice. Such communities of practice thrive when there is

structured time for collaborative work informed by a rich array of data

and access to internal and external expertise. We must take seriously

the need to evaluate the efficacy of professional development so that

we can more methodically improve it, channeling our investments into

activities and supports that make a difference. From induction for

novice teachers designed to accelerate their growth and development,

to replicating the practices of the most accomplished teachers,

professional development is a critical lever of improvement. As aprofession, we must develop greater competency in using it.

4. Effective Teachers and PrincipalsEffective educators have high standards of professional practice and

demonstrate their ability to improve student learning. Thus,

effectiveness must be evaluated based on measures of student

academic growth, evidence from classroom and school practice, andcontributions to colleagues and the school community. The results of

the evaluations should guide professional support and development,

and inform personnel decisions such as teacher and principal

assignments, the granting of professional status (e.g., tenure),

promotion to leadership roles, and dismissal for those who, despite

receiving support, are ineffective. Good evaluation systems should
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provide feedback to educators from both colleagues and supervisors

that is meaningful, credible, timely, and actionable, and should use

evidence-based processes that are fair, accurate, and transparent.

5. A Professional Career Continuum with Competitive CompensationEducators are one of our nation's most valuable resources. We must

create a profession that attracts great people into our schools and

classroomsand keeps them in the profession. To do this, we need to

offer educators career pathways that provide opportunities for

increasingly responsible roles, whether they choose to stay in the

classroom, become instructional leaders or move into administration.

And these roles must be coupled with compensation that is highenough to attract and retain a highly skilled workforce; reflects the

effectiveness, expertise, and contributions of each educator; and is

consistent with the societal regard accorded to comparable

professions.

6. Conditions for Successful Teaching and LearningHigh-functioning systems can amplify the accomplishments of their

educators, but a dysfunctional school or district can undermine theimpact of even the best teachers. We need schools and districts whose

climates and cultures, use of time, approaches to staffing, use of

technology, deployment of support services, and engagement of

families and communities are optimized to continuously improve

outcomes for the students they serve. Further, we must be prepared

to get the best teachers and principals to the highest-need students

(including low-income students, minority students, English learners,

and students with disabilities), and to ensure that all students haveaccess to the other resources (such as technology, instructional

materials, and social, health, and nutritional services) necessary to

support their academic success.

7. Engaged Communities
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Finally, no community can flourish unless its children are safe, healthy,

well-nourished, and well-educated; and no school can be a strong

pillar of a thriving community without deep community responsibility

for and ownership of the school's academic success. Thus, recognizing

that the fate of communities and their schools are inextricably linked,we must make schools stronger by educators embracing community

resources, expertise, and activities; and we must make communities

stronger by anchoring them around highly effective schools.

Tracing the Path of RESPECT Conversations

Milestones of RESPECT

Seeds of a National Conversation

Educators have long recognized the need to elevate the teaching profession so that our

schools are able to attract and retain the best educators. Groups like theCenter for

Teaching QualityandTeach Plusemerged out of a desire for educators to continue to

develop their talents and leadership.

Beginning in the summer 2011,Teaching Ambassador Fellowsat the U.S. Department of

Education (ED) began connecting with teacher leadership organizations to hold a nationalconversation with teachers and leaders. Their goal was to engage educators in crafting a

vision of what a transformed profession might look like.

ViewArne Duncan's call to teachers to redesign the profession. Followthe Fellows' path. Over a two-year period, the Fellows spoke with approximately 5,700 educators in more

than 360 group conversations.

Emerging Consensus

As conversations between educators and the Department took place, a number of nationalorganizations began issuing reports about their own work to transform the profession.

These reports revealed both agrowing consensus for elevating teaching and leading and a

unified vision for what a transformed profession might look like. [expand/collapse]
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Early Discussions (summer and early fall 2011)

Initial conversations with teachers and leaders, led by ED's Teaching Ambassador

Fellows, centered on developing a teacher-led vision for the profession. To focus the

discussions, teachers read and reacted to a three-page framework called "A Teaching

Profession for the 21st Century."Read[PDF, 64KB] this early prompt.

Expanded Discussions (late fall and early winter 2011)

In later conversations, educators examined ideas raised in by earlier groups. The prompt

used to guide these conversations took the form of an extended outline of the vision that

teachers had described in previous groups. After reviewing this prompt (that had grown

to about six pages), teachers reacted thoughtfully to the proposed vision and talked about

what it would take to create a profession like the one described.Read[PDF, 45KB] the

discussion prompt.

A Shared Vision, a Seminal Agreement

In May 2012, eight national organizations came together at a Labor Management

Collaboration (LMC) Conference in Cincinnati, Ohio, to sign a ground-breakingShared

Vision: Transforming the Teaching Profession[PDF, 517KB]. These organizations

represent a wide range of the stakeholder spectrum, including: teachers' unions (NEA and

AFT), school boards (NSBA), school administrators (AASA), mediators and counselors

(FMCS), state chiefs (CCSSO), the Council of Great City Schools (CGCS), and the U.S.

Department of Education.

The shared vision for transforming teaching and leading reflects the work of eightdifferent national organizations who agreed on these critical components.

[expand/collapse]

Describing and Refining the Vision (most of 2012)

Once teachers had contributed to the creation of a vision for the transformed profession,

conversations in 2012 centered on refining the vision and getting it right.

[expand/collapse]

Continuing and Expanding the National Conversations (late 2012 and

2013)

Since late 2012, the Teaching Ambassador Fellows have continued to talk with educators

about the RESPECT work, but the conversations have shifted in several ways.
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Expanding the Dialogue

The Fellows have worked intentionally to involve many more stakeholders in

conversations that include not just teachers, but also administrators, students, teacher

preparation professors, , parents, school board members, and even legislators. Travelingto multiple regions, the Fellows have sought to convene conversations that allow people

at all levels of education to weigh in on the vision, to hear about how the transformation

of the profession affects, and to discuss what they believe are the most important

components.

Shift ing the Conv ersat ion

Rather than asking about what a vision for a transformed profession might look like, the

conversations have shifted to the relative importance of the critical components in givenstates and districts, to how the work is playing out in various schools, and what

stakeholders at all levels can do to shape a transformed profession. Instead of using the

Vision statement as text, the Teaching Fellows refer to theLMC's Shared Vision:

Transforming the Teaching Profession[PDF, 517KB]. This universal document was

signed by the eight organizations at the Labor Management Conference.

What's Next for RESPECT?

Growing RESPECT in scho ols and dist r ic ts

In many schools and districts, educators already are working to transform teaching and

leading. [expand/collapse]

The Edu cator 's Role

No federal agency can cause or sustain the kind of revolutionary change that teachers

have told us they want in their profession. Most of this work takes place on the ground

level, in classrooms and schools across the country. [expand/collapse]

The Federal Role

President Obama believes that while government cannot fuel a revolution, we can support

the work of visionary educators working for change. [expand/collapse]
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Trace the RESPECT movement from its inception and learn more abouthow the vision

was developed. Read theRESPECT vision[MS Word, 147KB] for the profession

developed by teachers and leaders.
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student's respect

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